Monday Miscellany

I’ve been holding on to a whole passel of internetty things. I’m going to deposit them here for safekeeping. The whole passel. Are you ready for the passel? Here comes the passel.

Also, I’m accompanying them with a passel (OK, maybe a half passel) of photos taken on a snowy day last month.

Washing your face with oil? I’m old now, and I think it might be time to stop washing my face with soap. A Facebook friend of mine wrote this, and I’m saving it here to contemplate later. How do you wash your face, pals?

Bookshelf porn. I’m not a fan of using words like “porn” or “pimp” to refer to non-patriarchal things (blah blah and yeah there is good porn out there) but WHATEVER LOOK AT THESE BOOKSHELVES.

A random Google search led me to this here blog, which for some reason I sat and read at work for an hour or so, and by the time I finally left work the road was flooded (the snow you see here is finally melting, causing mass chaos) and I had to drive 45 minutes out of the way to get home. But it was OK, because the whole time I was singing along to Whispertown and thinking about this post: five reasons to stop trying to be happy. I think I’ve been living this way my whole life, but pretending that I’ve been trying to get happy, when really I’ve been trying to get an interesting and fulfilling life, which I have. Her point is that happiness often means stagnation, and if you want a real life it has to keep moving/changing/growing/being complicated. Just read the post, she explains it better.

DUDES! Have you been watching Downton Abbey? I always loves me a costume drama, the more Englishy/Austiney/angsty the better, but this Masterpiece Classics PBS series has all that plus some serious exploration of class, sex, and gender issues. Really, really great.

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6 Responses to “Monday Miscellany”

I’ve been watching Downton Abbey (of course) but I think it’s essentially conservative. I’d be interested in being convinced otherwise . . . And the PBS streaming cuts a very few scenes that are included on the Netflix streaming.

Really!! Hmm. I’ll think about this. Maybe I was just so wowed by the existence of gayness, but here’s my case: premarital sex, aforementioned gay dudes, old people being acknowledged as worthy of plot lines (small, but still), Lady Sibil the budding feminist…hmm? Yes, it’s still about wealthy white people and how they retain their advantages, but it has enough other stuff to keep me interested. I did watch it all while chocolatizing though, so I reserve the right to have missed a lot. Why do you think it’s conservative?

Specifically, Lady Sybil’s budding feminism requires straight men to defend her from working-class hordes and the gay men are made to seem evil and unnatural.

More generally, technological progress brings about emancipation, such as it is. Sponsored by Goldman Sachs. Plus, like you said, “it’s still about wealthy white people and how they retain their advantages.”

I actually think it is A LOT like Mad Men. The show raises issues and produces some good conversation, but resolves its most interesting issues, and plot lines, in repressive or dismissive ways. And the cliffhanger construction of the conversations is the same, but, unlike old daytime soaps, the conversations (on both shows) don’t usually end with a dohn . . . dohn . . . dohn . . . feel. Instead, on both shows, conversations tend to end with a more self-conscious, dry irony.

But I do love the bustling, well-intentioned Mrs. Isobel Crawley! And the acting is great and the costumes are great and I’m generally smitten.

Yes, it’s imperfect, and you’re right about teh gayz, but do you really want a world in which people who aren’t straight are always perfect? I don’t think they are made to seem evil because of their gayness…I don’t know, I got the feeling it was because the homophobic society they live in could make anyone nuts. And let’s hope that the next season will bring Lady Sybil more independence…

Ooh, but now that you’ve raised the MM parallel, I love DA 10 times more! I do think that, like MM, you’re right about not really resolving issues, or resolving them in odd or awful ways. But I tend to think that’s more because that’s so often what happens in life, and the fact that that’s awful is the real point, you know?

I also think that even though there are some great shows out there, I still come from the school that is impressed by anything vaguely messagey on TV, so I’m easily awed. I’m still sort of blown away by the deep politics of Ugly Betty. So…there we are.